map marker United Kingdom | Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Reading Time : 6 minutes
Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) has hit the headlines following the UK Government’s announcement of a £21.7 billion funding commitment that, it hopes, will reignite the country’s industrial heartlands and support the transition to net zero. This is significant for businesses across the UK as CCUS presents numerous opportunities. Furthermore, it supports the development of disruptive technologies and their ecosystems. At WSP, we’ve seen this firsthand through our work advising the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on its CCUS programme and supporting clients who are pioneering new business models.

CCUS involves capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by industrial processes. If not needed on site, it is compressed for transport by pipeline (and potentially also by ship, rail or truck in the future). The CO2 can then be used in a range of applications or injected into deep geological formations, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers, for storage. 

In the UK, a transport and storage network will operate under an economic licence – in a similar way to other regulated industries such as electricity, gas and water. These business models provide the long-term certainty that allows the projects to secure commercial debt. It’s a system that will be particularly important for businesses with high carbon footprints – those in the energy from waste, cement, chemicals and manufacturing sectors.
Dominic Cook
United Kingdom

Related themes and tags

Funding commitment from UK Government
£21.7 billion
Global CO2 emissions from cement manufacturing (1)
8%

Opportunities through innovation

In Teesside, a hub of decarbonised industries will share infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2. At its heart is a new combined cycle gas turbine power generation facility with amine-based carbon capture and storage system. This is connected into the Northern Endurance Partnership network for storage offshore in the Endurance site. 

Although government support is bringing much-needed certainty to the emerging CCUS sector, commercial momentum is also building as pieces of the puzzle fall into place. There is engagement from commercial lenders and the insurance markets understand the risks that need underwriting in the different parts of the new industry. There’s also a genuine appetite for the technology and an excitement as the first large-scale projects get underway, beginning in 2025 with the East Coast Cluster in Teesside.
The Net Zero Teesside Power plant uses existing technology, with another local site being a potential location for a new technology pioneered by NET Power. This innovative process burns natural gas in pure oxygen, eliminating nitrogen oxide emissions, and re-uses some of the CO2 produced before capturing the rest. We’ve supported NET Power along its development journey towards commercialisation, including an early demonstration plant in Texas, a multi-year testing and validation programme and a feasibility study for zero-emission electricity generation on Teesside. 

NET Power is one of many businesses turning innovation in this area into commercial reality. Another is CCm Technologies, who we supported during its early-stage development under the UK Government Energy Entrepreneurs Fund scheme. CCm uses CO2 captured from industrial power generation to turn by-products from industrial and waste processing facilities into tailor-made lower carbon fertiliser products. CCm has collaborated with PepsiCo to create fertiliser out of discarded potato peelings. And it’s working with Severn Trent to turn waste from the Minworth wastewater treatment plant near Birmingham into fertiliser pellets.

Other state-of-the-art, disruptive technology promises to reduce the cost of carbon capture.  For example, Nuada uses advanced solid adsorbents (metal-organic frameworks) to vacuum CO2 out of industrial emissions through a ‘heatless’ and solvent-free process that it claims could save up to US $1bn over the lifetime of a plant.

Key sectors: cement and energy from waste

Innovators like NET Power, CCm and Nuada are leading the way, but as with any disruptive technology, there are many opportunities for early adopters to gain an advantage. Cement manufacturing and energy from waste are two focus sectors where CCUS could make a big impact – both for individual businesses and for the climate.

The World Economic Forum estimates that cement manufacturing accounts for around 8% of global CO2 emissions. As a society, we need to reduce this impact urgently while enabling the continued use of concrete for buildings and infrastructure. This means there is a potentially huge market for low-carbon concrete. WSP is a founding member of ConcreteZero, a global initiative led by The Climate Group that brings together pioneering organisations by strategically using our purchasing power and influence, cultivating a market for net-zero concrete. And we helped to deliver carbon capture technology at Heidelberg’s cement manufacturing plant in Edmonton, Alberta. As one of the first projects on this scale in the industry, it has benefitted from Canadian government funding.

Many more projects like this are likely to follow in the cement sector – such as Heidelberg's Padeswood facility in North Wales and those in the Peak District. 

Energy from waste is another focus for CCUS, albeit for different reasons. Much of the waste processed by these plants contains biogenic material like food scraps. Capturing a significant portion of the CO2 emitted would result in putting more carbon back into the ground than is released. Creating carbon-negative facilities is an attractive business proposition, especially with the rising costs associated with carbon emissions.

The UK Government has been gradually reducing the availability of carbon allowances in recent years as it seeks to cut emissions. In total, allowances are set to decrease by 30% between 2021 and 2027. This significantly raises the cost of running carbon-emitting processes because with fewer allowances to buy, businesses with high emissions will need to purchase more credits to offset the difference or invest in reducing their emissions. Companies can tackle this challenge by evaluating the carbon emissions throughout their product life cycle and supply chain, and utilising CCUS to reduce emissions without greatly impacting their operations.

Balancing risk, and partnering for success

Although the rise in carbon cost is gradual, it is a significant change and makes CCUS increasingly attractive. What does this trend mean for a business considering its future strategy? Should you wait until the cost of emitting matches the cost of putting CCUS in place? What if you adopt CCUS early and then the technology evolves? These are important questions and are some of many we work through with clients as we help them assess their options for reducing carbon emissions, CCUS readiness and design an implementation roadmap.

The answers will be different depending on sector, location and specific circumstances. For some large carbon emitters situated close to the new CCUS clusters, it may make sense to move early, adopt a CO2 capture solution based on the existing amine fluid technology and benefit from the certainty this provides. Others may decide to wait for the efficiency and cost reductions promised by novel and emerging technologies. 
Businesses based further from the first clusters and their pipelines might consider how transporting captured CO2 to storage by road, rail or sea could evolve. They may even be driven to analyse the benefits of relocating to an area such as Teesside, Humberside, Runcorn and South Wales as low-carbon clusters grow and attract skilled workforces.

This is why understanding factors like policy, operations and supply chains is just as important as the technical knowledge required for project development. It’s this blend of proven expertise we bring when we partner with businesses to help them analyse the risks and opportunities of CCUS – now and in the years ahead.

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